A new multimillion-rand telescope in the Karoo will offer astronomers an unprecedented view of the stars. The MeerLICHT instrument in Sutherland will be specifically linked to the MeerKAT radio telescope array near Carnarvon in the Northern Cape. Unlike its bigger brother SALT (Southern African Large Telescope), the MeerLICHT is meant …
Washington: Astronomers have spotted a rare mid-weight black hole some 290 million light-years from Earth which they say offers clues about a now-destroyed galaxy that may once have existed around it. Researchers at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy in Australia who spotted the black hole using the Hubble Space Telescope …
Beijing: China has put off its plan to send a manned mission this year to experiment space rendezvous and docking mission. Instead an unmanned spacecraft would be sent to follow up last year’s successful experiment of space docking, official media here reported on Thursday. Plans are afoot to launch the …
Geneva: The tidy Swiss want to clean up space. Swiss scientists said on Wednesday they plan to launch a “janitor satellite” specially designed to get rid of orbiting debris known as space junk. The $11-million satellite called CleanSpace One — the prototype for a family of such satellites — is …
Swiss scientists say they plan to launch a “janitor satellite” specially designed to get rid of orbiting debris known as space junk. The $11 million satellite, called CleanSpace One, the prototype for a family of spacecraft, is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for …
Washington: The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way may be devouring asteroids on a daily basis, a new study based on findings by Nasa’s Chandra spacecraft has suggested. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, named in honour of Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, has been detecting Xray flares about …
A Permanent Lunar Base Can Be Set Up By Adapting Tech Used In Building. Could the United States establish a moon colony and develop a new propulsion system for going to Mars? All within eight years of a Newt Gingrich presidency, as Gingrich promised this week? The answers seem to …
Washington: Fearing a catastrophic galactic collision, the US has said it will hold talks with the European Union, India and other nations , to develop a code of conduct for activities in outer space. "The United States has decided to join with the European Union and other nations to develop …
HOUSTON: Milky way after all is milky in colour for sure! Scientists have revealed that our galaxy is aptly named Milky Way as it looks white, the colour of fresh snow in the early morning. University of Pittsburgh astronomers said their finding is significant because we are located in the …
WASHINGTON: Astronomers should start hunting for planets like the Tatooine in the science fiction series " Star Wars", as Earth-like worlds could exist in the habitable zones around binary systems, scientists say. In the "Star Wars" universe, Tatooine was a circumbinary planet that had two Suns. In September last year, …
Two robotic probes began orbiting the moon Sunday in preparation for an unprecedented mission to map the lunar interior. NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft wrapped up 2.6-million-mile journey to put themselves into lunar orbit on Saturday and Sunday. Over the next two months, the probes' …
Grail, 110th Mission To Earth’s Satellite, Will Help Understand Lunar Enigma Better Pasadena, California: As planet Earth rang in the new year, a different kind of countdown was happening at the moon. After a 3½-month journey, a Nasa spacecraft flew over the Moon’s south pole, fired its engine and dropped …
LONDON: The Moon may be the best place to look for aliens as their footprints on its surface would last far longer than radio signals, scientists have suggested. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, project looks for alien life in a one, main specific way by scanning for radio …
Astronomers have found a pair of Earth-sized planets orbiting a star similar to the sun, though neither is believed to be suitable for life, scientists on NASA’s Kepler telescope team said. The discovery follows confirmation earlier this month of a super-Earth sized planet, called Kepler-22b, which circles the right distance …
New York: Astronomers have found a pair of Earth-sized planets orbiting a star similar to the Sun, scientists on Nasa’s Kepler telescope team said. While the finds — Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f — are too hot to sustain life, they are an encouraging sign for prospects of finding life elsewhere. The …
Australian scientists who modelled conditions on Mars to examine how much of the red planet was habitable said Monday that ‘large regions’ could sustain life. Charley Lineweaver’s team, from the Australian National University, compared models of temperature and pressure conditions on Earth with those on Mars to estimate how much …
The most Earth-like planet ever discovered is orbiting a Sun-like star 600 light years away, every 290 days. US’s Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) said the Kepler space telescope confirmed its first-ever planet — Kepler-22b — in a habitable zone outside our solar system. It is 2.4 times the …
Los Angeles: More than three decades after launching, Nasa’s workhorse spacecraft is inching closer to leaving the solar system behind. Currently 11 billion miles away from the sun, Voyager 1 has been exploring the fringes of the solar system since 2004. Scientists said on Monday the spacecraft has entered a …
London: British scientists claim to have successfully sent worms on a mission to space to test how they deal with the travel as well as to understand how humans could respond to the rigours of inter-planetary journeys. A team at the University of Nottingham, which sent Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny …
For the first time, scientists have discovered shifting sand dunes and ripples all over Mars, a finding which suggests strong winds keep the sandy surface of the Red Planet much more active than ever imagined. Images captured by NASA spacecraft Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed wind-blown sand dunes moving across the …
A huge body of water as big as North America’s Great Lakes may lie beneath Jupiter’s moon Europa, astronomers have said. The water body, believed to be locked within Europa’s icy outer shell a few kilometres from the surface, offered one of the best hopes yet of finding life beyond …
